Wednesday 16 March 2016

Going to My Happy Place

There have been some stressful things happening to people I love lately, and then those stupid Facebook memories (which I love) reminded me of someone who died too young. It's been a rough few weeks.

Let's talk about what's making me happy.

This was released on the weekend:


That appearance at the end?!? WHAT?!? Last I heard, Marvel didn't have movie rights for that character!!?!?! Mind. Blown.

Vancouver hosted its first Rugby Sevens tournament. By all accounts, it was a success. Plus, it meant that Brian O'Driscoll was in Vancouver. I love that man. I seriously considered heading to Vancouver for the weekend to see if I could spot him. 

In B.O.D. we trust!
The man was a legend on the Irish Rugby team.

I didn't go to Vancouver, however, because stressful things happening to people I love.

I know awesome people who are doing awesome things. Cely and her sister are raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (I linked to the Canada page because they also do Team-in-Training) with an epic bike ride. My cousin, David, is raising money for Mencap by running a marathon. And yes, I did just shamelessly link to both of their fundraising pages. When it comes to good people doing good things, I have pretty much no shame.

I went to see The Bills on Friday night with my stepmom. It was their CD release party for Victoria as well as a fundraiser for UVic's Continuing Studies division. The funds raised are going towards sponsoring a refugee family from Syria. I love the Bills and it was a fantastic evening of entertainment. 


This is one of their older songs but I enjoyed the new music they played on Friday. I can't wait to get my hands on the CD. I've been humming What Trouble Is since Friday night. (Sticking with the old songs,they closed the night with Bamfield's John Vanden. It gave me shivers to hear it live. P.S. John Vanden was a real person.)

St. Patrick's Day is this tomorrow. You'll probably find a few posts floating about that tell you how to say 'Happy St. Patrick's Day' or to order a pint of Guinness. But what you really need to know is in this video:


I'll be watching it and practicing my insults as I bake my Guinness Chocolate Cupcakes with Bailey's Cream Cheese icing tonight!

Monday 7 March 2016

Monday Night Brain Dump

I had a moment after my last post where work became quite stressful and I actually forgot how time worked.

Seriously. Not a joke.

I couldn't remember if we went from one month to the next in the middle of the day, or if Thursday following Wednesday happened every week. This is what four days of crazy will do to a person.

The inability to understand time only last about 10 minutes but it wasn't exactly a fun 10 minutes.

In amongst the loss of cognitive thought, I miss tracking my own weight. When I started going to the gym, I decided to just use the gym scale with my trainer and leave it at that. Except I love charts and grafts and tracking things in Excel. I'm seeing changes in my body and I'd love to have a fun little graft I could plop into a post to say "see? SEE? I'm not just making this up!"

If I can't track it in Excel, I don't care to track it at all.

I dusted off my old spreadsheet, updated the data, and have started tracking at home with my cheap, old scale. It's not as accurate as the gym scale but it's close enough.

(If you ever need help with Excel, feel free to drop me a line. I <3 Excel so much!)

I attended a friend's burlesque revue at the end of February. The show was so much fun and my friend rocked her number. She only started in November but she knew how to sexy eye look. After the show, Katie (another friend) and I proceeded to relive our early 20s. I believe the words "we should go to Denny's!!" may have escaped my mouth around 1:30am. Yeah. It was that kind of night.


I'd be quite happy to never have a night like that again, to be honest.

I did not successfully complete my 90 day Add1Challenge. Now, I don't want to blame it all on my inability to understand time, but that certainly didn't help. I was already behind the 8 ball after being sick in January. When Thursdays started confusing me, I figured I had to throw in the towel... even if only for my own sanity.

Still, to remain positive about it:
  1. I progressed much further in my Swahili learning than I would have without it.
  2. The Add1Challenge Community is a really fantastic bunch of people and I am thrilled I got to be a part of it.
  3. Even in my failure, I know what and how I can do better next time.
  4. Oh, yes. There will be a next time.
I'm not going to do the next challenge because my mental capacities need a break, but I'd like to do another Swahili challenge before I go. I'm actually thinking that if I time it right, the challenge could end as I'm going to Tanzania so my 15 minute conversation could be with someone there. I have to sit down and think it out a bit more but I'm liking the idea more and more.


I still plan to continue with Swahili on my own, but not as intensely as I was during the challenge.

Finally, I can't remember if I shared this previously. The GAA season is starting up again. The big news for Monaghan is that FKM is their secondary sponsor this year. Big news because yours truly used to work for FKM! At any rate, this commercial is a few years old but it's one of my 'happy place' videos so I've been watching it a lot recently.


Kilkenny and Tipperary are two of the dominant hurling counties (along with Cork and Kerry) so when they ended up facing each other in the All-Ireland final in 2014, the adverts pulled footage from the times they had previously met in the finals.